Angry Male Readers and SFR

I just realized that “SFR” (science fiction romance) could also stand for Self-empowered Female Readers. Very cool.

Last week, the producers of the newest Star Wars movie, Rogue One, released the first official trailer. I saw it, loved it and can’t wait for the movie to come out (December!).

Within hours of the trailer release, though, there were anti-SJW men posting everywhere about how pissed they were that “yet another” female lead had been cast, and what the hell, Disney?

I had to have a think about that for a while.

Romanceland, of course, is 100% cast with female leads. It defines the genre. BUT. Romanceland also features heroes — male leads, almost 100% of the time. I’d say “always” except I’m sure there is the rare exception out there to prove me wrong. I’m thinking, in particular, of some of the short category romances that have incredibly two-dimensional heroes that stay distant and cold and mostly silent until the last chapter when they admit they’ve been hiding their love since they spotted the heroine. (ugh).

So even though romance is read almost exclusively by women, we don’t seem to have any objections to men littering our literature. (Sorry, couldn’t resist that one.)

The reverse doesn’t seem to apply in the slightest.

Science Fiction (not just SFR) has been touted as a mostly-male dominated genre (which isn’t actually true, but the myth continues to regenerate). There is an abundance of testosterone laden leads in SF, and when I heard about this pissing match over Rogue One, it occurred to me that men who read SF with female leads might get just as pissed off. Or perhaps they refuse to read about women characters at all. If the hero is female, do they avoid the book?

Which raises the question: Why do some men feel threatened by female leads in their fiction and movies? Women don’t actively avoid male leads in their fiction…so why do men?

Give me you thoughts in comments, below. I’m curious!

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Because I am publishing my science fiction as SFR, I don’t think I’m likely to have male readers trying to throw rotten tomatoes at me any time soon. If I was to venture into “straight” SF, that might be a different issue and not one I have to worry about just yet.

Cat and Company is the third book in the Interspace Origins series, and that last of that particular trilogy, although there will be more books in the Interspace universe in the future. Cat and Company will be officially released on May 12, but it is already available for pre-order. You can find all the buy links for the book here, along with an excerpt.

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2 Comments

I don’t know how to answer this one. But it is so true. Right now I’m really glad that there are so many strong women characters, leads on SF TV shows and really hope it moves over to the big screen. The one thing I have noticed is that if the woman led movie stars a big name it does fine with the men. Maybe it’s a thing of the series beginning with a male as the main leading character and they think it should continue that way. Thank god my grandson (my movie going partner) isn’t one of those guys. He likes or dislikes a movie by it’s strong acting, storyline. We saw that Hardcore Harry and My Name is Daisy and he liked Daisy better.